"Fickleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bosom, a dress, no doubt, more suitable to a harlot than a matron. But, as they changed soon after, insomuch that they wore collars up to the chin, covering the whole of the neck and throat, so have I hopes they will change again; not indeed so much from motives of decency, as through that fickleness, which pervades every ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... She would call up Mr. Dunlap, the Hometon teller, and invite him up to spend the evening; then she would question him concerning the fickleness of bankclerks. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... times of the noblest impulses, he was equally capable of the basest actions. Extremely accessible to praise, he indiscriminately entertained every form of flattery; but his fickleness was such that no courtier could cajole him long. Among his favorite women was the beautiful Princess Tongoo Soopia, sister to the unfortunate Sultan Mahmoud, ex-rajah of Pahang. Falling fiercely in love with her on her presentation at his court, he procured her for his harem ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... unfortunate result, at length openly avowed himself the suitor of the brilliant Marquise, and even promised to make her his wife; while the scandalous chroniclers of the time do not hesitate to affirm that the Prince de Joinville himself had previously done the same, but that his proverbial fickleness had protected him ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... some Shawnees saw it, and thought Clark was preparing for an inroad.] They at once countermarched, but on reaching the threatened towns found that the alarm had been groundless. Most of the savages, with characteristic fickleness of temper, then declined to go farther; but a body of somewhat over three hundred Hurons and Lake Indians remained. With these, and their Detroit rangers, Caldwell and McKee crossed the Ohio and marched into Kentucky, to attack the small forts of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... phenomenon of wind and storm but have failed signally, nor can they succeed while they seek a mechanical solution to what is really a manifestation of life. Could they see the hosts of sylphs winging their way hither and thither, they would know who and what is responsible for the fickleness of the wind; could they watch a storm at sea from the etheric view-point they would perceive that the saying "the war of the elements" is not an empty phrase, for the heaving sea is truly then a battlefield of sylphs and undines and the howling ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... account somewhat unfairly for this sudden change; for besides some hard and unjust surmises concerning female fickleness and mutability, he began to suspect that he owed this want of civility to his want of horses; a sort of animals which, as they dirty no sheets, are thought in inns to pay better for their beds than their riders, and are therefore considered as the more desirable company; but Mrs Whitefield, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Richard reopened it with "a most royal Christmas feast" of twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep, and game and fowls without number, feeding ten thousand guests for many days. Yet but a few years afterwards (such is the fickleness of fortune and the instability of human affairs) this same king, who had seen the "Merciless Parliament," who had robbed Hereford of his estates, who had been robed in cloth of gold and precious ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... aristocracy. Even in the first steps of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor, such as ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the intelligence of what for the nonce seemed Viviette's wanton fickleness that he quite omitted to look at the second letter; and remembered nothing about it till an hour afterwards, when sitting in his own room ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... built after a fashion much in vogue a century since, and which, by a fickleness that influences marine architecture as well as less important things, is again coming into use, for vessels of her force. The accommodations of the commander were on the same deck with the batteries of the ship, and they were frequently ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... enter upon the prescribed exercises of college with more readiness and effect than others, will ordinarily prosecute and finish their course with proportionably higher reputation. Indeed, to the want of a thorough initiation into the rudiments of learning may be traced much of that indolence and fickleness and easy yielding to temptation, by which the mind, untaught in the labor of successful occupation, and discouraged by the failure of its imprudent efforts, is presently paralyzed, and lost to every honorable and useful purpose. If then it may be provided that early instruction ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... unreasonable when, having enough to content themselves with at home, they go in search of something else. I have often seen people who, not content with sufficiency, have aimed at bettering themselves, and have fallen into a worse position than they were in before. Such persons receive no pity, for fickleness is ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the weakness, no doubt, it was yet an affection to which every better quality of her nature had contributed its share. Hazlehurst's determination never to forgive himself for the sorrow he had caused her, was a just one. His fickleness had deeply wounded a heart, warm, true, and generous, as ever ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... Mirza Abu-Taleb,[19] and in much the same line of argument—to the effect that the dowery which the eastern husband is bound by law to pay over in money to his wife in the event of a separation, is a far more effectual protection to the wife from the fickleness and caprice of her partner, ("whose interest it thus becomes, setting affection wholly out of the question, to remain on good terms with her,") than any remedy afforded by the laws of England; where a wife, though bound by ties less easily dissolved than under the Mohammedan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... moment of my life I form such wishes. You may see by this that I preserve still that sincere friendship which has united our hearts from our tenderest years:—recognize at least, my dear Sister, that you did me a sensible wrong when you suspected me of fickleness towards you, and believed false reports of my listening to tale-bearers; me, who love only you, and whom neither absence nor lying rumors could change in respect of you. At least don't again believe ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with no party; he is looked at with distrust, contempt, and aversion by all. His former friends think him a good riddance, and his new friends are cold and strange; and as to the impartial public, their very first impulse is to impute the change to some eccentricity of character, or fickleness of mind, or tender attachment, or private interest. Their utmost praise is the reluctant confession that "doubtless he is very sincere." Churchmen and Dissenters, men of Rome and men of the Kirk, are equally subject to this remark. Not ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... serious, the love that is light. And experience had taught her why it is that human nature soon tires of intensity, turns to frivolity. She felt that, if she could act, she would try to show that not Turiddu's fickleness nor his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but Santuzza's sad intensity and Lola's butterfly gayety had cost Santuzza her lover and her lover his life. So, it was not Santuzza's but Lola's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... putting his trust in the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of his right hand, is a fool! As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory. Its fickleness is to be held true to men's purposes only by an undaunted resolution and by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has always been more hate than love. Odi et amo may well be the confession of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable, but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room causeuses. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that public opinion. At the same time, we have no reason to ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... nearest possible point of access to your venerable gateway. Besides, even you have too much regard to the land of Kit North, to entertain any desire to see its most attractive shrine of pilgrimage too suddenly eclipsed; and why should you court such an exposure of popular fickleness, when about to become yourself "the comet of a season," and to go through that brilliant perihelion, in which, reversing the feat of Horace with his lofty head, you will sweep away all other stars with a swinge of your luminous caudality? Yes, Godfrey—spare your own feelings, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... incredulous priests shall not go without an answer, that will, I am sure, induce them to place a great confidence in the benefit arising from Christians, who damn themselves every hour of the day. For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... he cried, in affected surprise. "You were not wont, in past days, to consider my presence an insult, and I could never have believed fickleness a part of your nature. You are now of age, and have a right to listen to my defense, and my suit for your heart ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... about some affair of love either past or in contemplation; but when non-lovers meet, no one asks the reason why, because people know that talking to another is natural, whether friendship or mere pleasure be the motive. Once more, if you fear the fickleness of friendship, consider that in any other case a quarrel might be a mutual calamity; but now, when you have given up what is most precious to you, you will be the greater loser, and therefore, you will have more reason in being afraid of the lover, for his vexations are many, and he is ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... It is not a perpetual leaping from one position to another like that of Mr. George Moore. It is a quite continuous advance along a quite solid road in a quite definable direction. But the chief proof that it is not a piece of fickleness and vanity is the fact that it has been upon the whole in advance from more startling opinions to more humdrum opinions. It has been even in some sense an advance from unconventional opinions to conventional opinions. This fact fixes Mr. Wells's honesty ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... one offends the divine will, which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will say as much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... we continued to travel southward—further and further from home, as it seemed to us. Whenever we could meet, Halliday, Ben, and I—not trusting to the sheikh's promises, of whose fickleness we had many proofs—eagerly discussed the possibility of escaping. Ben's idea was, that if we should arrive at length at a river running into the sea, we might either steal a canoe or build a raft, and float down the stream. We might thus escape from our ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... hills of Vijiapore. Another moment and brave Timma sat Upon the bridal seat, the veil was drawn, And, through the veil, the sacred knot was tied Round Chandra's neck, and all was merry there. And still another moment when—alas! For that strange fickleness of human life Whose joys and griefs each other follow like The spokes of some fast-going wheel—there came The wounded Bukka with a violent wail That Timma had the king's adviser slain, Whose body lay upon the riverside, Exposed to all the carrion birds of prey, And him too wounded, but the ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... by their nice names," pleaded Nan. "It's not fickleness—it's fertility of imagination; it's not a collapse—it's only a fresh beginning! But we really mean it this time, and you mean to say 'Yes,' too. I know you do; so nothing now remains but to talk it over with Kitty in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a German source that the resignation of Count TISZA was procured by Marshal VON HINDENBURG. It is a curious commentary on the fickleness of the multitude that the KAISER isn't even mentioned as having taken a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... tender, saddened light, long, patient suffering had wrought; the lips, once curved in haughtiest disdain, had taken the sweetness of years of hopeless pain. And so, after three-and-twenty years, Victor Catheron saw the woman, whose life his father's falsity and fickleness had wrecked. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of Julia, constant against the fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child?—of Helena, against the petulance and insult of a careless youth?—of the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the "unlessoned girl," who appears among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive passions of ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... fellow-creatures with indifference, with satisfaction, and at length with a hideous rapture, deserves to be regarded as a portent of wickedness; and such a man was Barere. The history of his downward progress is full of instruction. Weakness, cowardice, and fickleness were born with him; the best quality which he received from nature was a good temper. These, it is true, are not very promising materials; yet, out of materials as unpromising, high sentiments of piety and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... implied a fickleness of temperament that was disastrous to his self-respect. It deflated him to the proportions of an Adair. It toppled his lofty standards in the dust. It changed him from a loyalist, making a fanatical last stand, into ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Alexandrian theology were as little appreciated by the Celts of Asia as is the stately churchmanship of England by the Celts of Wales. They were the foreigner's thoughts, too cold for Celtic zeal, too grand for Celtic narrowness. Fickleness is not inconsistent with a true and deep religious instinct, and we may find something austere and high behind the ever-changing phases of spiritual excitement. Thus the ideal holiness of the church, upheld by Montanists and Novatians, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... moment's weakness; in brief, not the stuff of which friends are made! When the knight appears and kills her monster, he loses his halo for Andromede, who cherishes her monstrous guardian. Perseus, a prig disgusted by the fickleness of the Young Person, flees, and the death of the monster brings to life a lovely youth—put under the spell of malignant powers—who promptly weds his ward. In Lohengrin, Son of Parsifal, the whole machinery ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... affianced bride. No suitor had ever felt his suit to be more hopeless than he had done; and yet he now regarded himself as one whose high hopes of happy love had all been destroyed by the treachery of a friend and the fickleness of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of my early character was plasticity and fickleness. I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as gross mistakes in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hastens to fall on my breast. Then fickleness soon bids it onwards be flowing; A second draws ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the country of their origin. "Its abruptness and severity, and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness a specimen of that 'esprit impretueux, ouvert a toutes les impressions,' and that 'mobilite extreme,' which Thierry marks as characteristic of the Gaulish race." At all events, the language of the Gauls disappeared in Central France to make way for the language or the Capital—the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... anniversaries of his coming of age. Nor had he altogether yet got over the passion of greed for the whole group of the well-favoured of the fair sex, which in his early youth had made it bitter for him to submit to the fickleness, not to say the modest fickleness, of any handsome one of them in yielding her hand to a man and suffering herself to be led away. Ladies whom he had only heard of as ladies of some beauty incurred his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... downstairs in the highest good humor. He had been convinced of two things in the interview with his wife: The first was that she could be induced to return to him; the second was that she loved Riley Sinclair. He did not hate her for such fickleness. He merely despised her for her lack of brains. No thinking woman could hesitate a moment between the ranches and the lumber tracts of Cartwright and the empty purse ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... should speak about the excellent qualities of the man, especially of those qualities which she knows are pleasing to the girl. She should, moreover, speak with disparagement of the other lovers of the girl, and talk about the avarice and indiscretion of their parents, and the fickleness of their relations. She should also quote samples of many girls of ancient times, such as Sakuntala and others, who, having united themselves with lovers of their own caste and their own choice, were ever happy afterwards in their society. And ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... anticipate. While all this was occurring, the struggle in Peru had continued to show the fickleness of the fortunes of war. Rondeau had been appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of Peru; he, however, had proved himself a General of slow movements, and suffered several defeats. He also fell out with Guemes, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... was forever having a "crush" on some girl or other, getting suddenly over it, and seeking another affinity with bewildering fickleness. Eva Larry had been proclaimed her dearest friend for a longer term than most who had ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Accordingly, with a fickleness not confined to the people of Nomansland, no sooner was the late King laid in his grave than they pronounced him to have been a usurper; turned all his family out of the palace, and left it empty for the reception ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... if excusing the fickleness of the absent woman—"perhaps some fresh knowledge concerning the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... gentlemen when they break off their engagements is not generally very publicly known, but the duke came out from this interview in a fit of great vexation and anger. He pulled off the queen's ring and threw it from him, muttering curses upon the fickleness and faithlessness ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Nicolas, I saw a lexicon there, compiled by father Fray Martin de Rada, which contained a great number of words. This must have been of no little aid to those who came afterward. The fathers did not dare baptize the Indians immediately; for, on the one hand, they feared their fickleness, since they knew with what ease those who had received baptism in the time of General Magallanes, had apostatized. Besides, the fathers did not know what orders would be given them, or whether they would be commanded to retire. Thus they were very ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... might wear a changeful sign, And fickleness the Sky— Yet, even then, that love of thine ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... consolation to reflect that my change was owing to my fortitude or to my capacity for instruction. Better thoughts grew up in my mind imperceptibly. I cannot but congratulate myself on the change, though, perhaps, it merely argues a fickleness of temper, and ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... bitter mortification to one in whose bosom pride still rested. She would not have thus tormented herself with turning and twisting Mary's information into such ideas, had she not felt assured that he had penetrated her weakness, and despised her. Fickleness was no part of St. Eval's character, of that she was convinced; but it was natural he should cease to love, when he had ceased to esteem, and in the society and charms of Louisa Manvers ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... owner. A glass of claret was the third grace. But, if we had been there, we should have devoted ourselves to one of the sparkling sisters; for one wine, like one woman, is sufficient to interest one's feelings for four-and-twenty hours. Fickleness we abhor. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... our happiness, if at first the even tenor of a quiet life seems tedious, when we look at it more closely we discover that the pleasantest habit of mind consists in a moderate enjoyment which leaves little scope for desire and aversion. The unrest of passion causes curiosity and fickleness; the emptiness of noisy pleasures causes weariness. We never weary of our state when we know none more delightful. Savages suffer less than other men from curiosity and from tedium; everything is the same to them—themselves, not their ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... hurt by this proof of the rapidity of feminine fickleness, I began to congratulate her effusively on having obtained such an excellent substitute for my worthless self, and to wish the happy couple all earthly felicities, when she explained that he was not a fiance, but merely a sort of friend, and Mrs MANKLETOW ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... one of his nature, he forgot entirely his ruminations upon the advisability of discarding her, and the difficulty he experienced in devising a plan whereby this could be done easily and gracefully. He only thought of himself as the blameless victim of a woman's fickleness. The bitter things he had read and heard of the sex's inconstancy rose in his mind, as acrid bile sometimes ascends ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the Anugita, and you will find that Arjuna after the great battle, forgetting the teaching that was given him on Kurukshetra, asked his Teacher to repeat that teaching once again. And Shri Krishna, rebuking him for the fickleness of his mind and stating that He was much displeased that such knowledge should by fickleness have been forgotten, uttered these remarkable words: "It is not possible for me to state it in full in that way. I discoursed to thee ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... for a short time Lannes, reduced to his own troops, found himself in a difficult position. He was, moreover, ill from a fall from his horse, but succeeded in winning the battle, and drove before him, one after another, all the divisions of the enemy's army. With the cruel and heedless fickleness of revolutionary governments, the Junta of Aranjuez hurriedly cashiered Generals Blake and Castanos. The Marquis of Romana's soldiers having distinguished themselves at Espinosa, he was appointed general of the united armies. Already, in ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Rightly or wrongly, I have the reputation of fickleness in regard to women, and Aniela must have heard remarks about it; maybe it is for that very reason the dear girl shows such unbounded confidence in me. I understand, and can almost hear the pure soul saying: "They wrong you,—you are not fickle; and those who ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... been quite willing to forget the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it, there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing her heartlessness ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... sincerest integrity of purpose in maintenance of popular rights, unspotted, I trust, by one single vote of a contrary tendency, I, together with many others of the staunchest friends of those rights, experienced such extreme fickleness of popular opinion that this conclusion has long been formed in my mind: that the great body of the people of this Province (without doubt there are many honourable exceptions), in no wise ignorant of their rights or the great value ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... respective young leaders as Il Capo della Repubblica and "Il Signore di Firenze." Better far as matters turned out, had it been deemed sufficient to advance Ippolito alone. His splendid talents—although linked to fickleness and inconsistency—and his liberality, appealed to the Florentines, and he might have proved a second Lorenzo ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... on the essential and increasing individuality of women, which is to a large extent a recent phenomenon. The cynical commonplace is "All women are alike"—and then follows the specific accusation—"in fickleness", "in extravagance", "in unreasonableness", in this trick or that. The chief effort of conservatism is to make them alike, to fit each one for the same life by the same training in habits, knowledge, abilities, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... be observed, however, that the characteristic idleness of criminals makes them disinclined to adopt any profession, and when they do, their extreme fickleness ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Mansoul some willingness to surrender up themselves unto them, might they but have the colour of an invitation to do it under. Yea, so far as I could gather, the town had been surrendered up to them before now, had it not been for the opposition of old Incredulity, and the fickleness of the thoughts of my Lord Will-be-will. Diabolus also began to rave, wherefore Mansoul, as to yielding, was not yet all of one mind, therefore, they still lay distressed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... very beginning that none dared attack him. The one, in a word, by the depth of his genius and the incredible resources of his courage, rose superior to the greatest perils and even knew how to profit by every kind of fickleness of fortune; the other, by reason of the advantages derived from high birth, by his great conceptions derived from Heaven, and by a kind of admirable instinct, the secret of which is not given to ordinary men, seemed born ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... France, chiefly at the instigation of Gobel, who was, in reward, appointed bishop of Paris, and whose nephew, Rengger, shortly afterward became a member of the revolutionary government in Berne. In Geneva, during the preceding year, the French faction had gained the upper hand. The fickleness of the war kept the rest of the patriots in a state of suspense, but, on the seizure of the left bank of the Rhine by the French, the movements in Switzerland assumed a more serious character. The abbot, Beda, of St. Gall, 1795, pacified his subjects by concessions, which his ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... on, and the quips and merry jests of Oscar Wilde, his artful artlessness, his insolence, his self-pity, his loyalty and fickleness, his sensuality and tenderness, only fill after all a small space in the heart's chamber of those who read him and stare at his plays and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... wind, came hither in the palmy days of mediaeval Portugal, but returned discomfited. Goths from the Northern bounds of Thuringian pine forests followed in their turn, but the power and prestige of Hindu Java remained invincible until destroyed by the wayward fickleness of her own children. Brahminism was finally discarded for the specious promises of Arabian invaders, and the lightly-held faith succumbed to the creed of Islam. Mosques were built, Hindu temples were forsaken, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... for the Baesle. Poor girl! But while the hollyhock was taking the bee's fickleness so solemnly, a rose was revenging her upon him. A more serious—for Mozart a very serious—affair, was his infatuation with Aloysia Weber, a fifteen-year-old girl with much beauty and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... slice—hoping it might hold the picayune, and thus symbolize good fortune. The ring presaged the next bride or groom, the darning needle single blessedness to the end, the thimble, many to sew for, or feed, the button, fickleness or disappointment. After the bridal party had done cutting, other young folk tempted fate. Bride's cake was not for eating—instead, fragments of it, duly wrapped and put under the pillow, were thought to make whatever the sleeper dreamed come true. Especially if the dream included a ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... variously represented. Sometimes she is depicted bearing in her hand two rudders, with one of which she steers the bark of the fortunate, and with the other that of the unfortunate among mortals. In later times she appears blindfolded, and stands on a ball or wheel, indicative of the fickleness and ever-revolving {148} changes of fortune. She frequently bears the sceptre and cornucopia[49] or horn of plenty, and is usually winged. In her temple at Thebes, she is represented holding the infant Plutus in her arms, to symbolize her ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Gradually the idea gained upon him, that it was not impossible to repair the past. His conduct had been unpardonable, no doubt; yet, perhaps it might be forgiven. But even if Elinor could forget his inexcusable fickleness, would her friends ever consent to risk her future peace with one who had so recklessly trifled with her already? Mr. Wyllys had been deeply indignant at his conduct; his whole manner had changed, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... justify such fickleness; but affection did justify it. There was but little of the Roman about Mr Harding. He could not sacrifice his Lucretia even though she should be polluted by the accepted addresses of the clerical Tarquin at the palace. If Tarquin could be prevented, well and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then, with the fickleness of its nature, it turned again toward the avenue and the free lemonade dispensed by the fairest maidens in Jordantown. But before the stream could turn the corner, a long-legged black pig greased with the lard of its forbears was turned loose—to become the property of any man who could ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... brings down the affairs of Greece to the battle of Marathon and the death of Miltiades. In the sentence passed on the hero of Marathon, the operation of a popular government has been often disadvantageously traced; the Athenians have been accused of fickleness and ingratitude. Mr Grote repels the charge. With some observations upon this defence, which forms the conclusion of the fourth and last of the published volumes, we shall bring our own notice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... President and his party. Edwin D. Morgan so understood it, and although he had heretofore sustained the President, he now stood with the Radicals. Raymond also knew the gravity of the situation. But Raymond, who often wavered and sometimes exhibited an astonishing fickleness,[1054] saw only one side to the question, and on April 9 when the House, by a vote of 122 to 41, overrode the veto, he was one of only seven ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Bikkure To'elet ("Useful First Fruits"), which he published at Amsterdam, in 1820, under the auspices of the Maskilim society To'elet. The Talmudic narrative about the seduction of the celebrated wife of Rabbi Meir, forms the subject of an excellent poem, entitled "Beruriah", on the fickleness ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... destruction of men, O bull among men. Indeed, every one of these wait for opportunity in respect of men, like a hunter expectant of opportunities in respect of deer. Assertion of one's own superiority, desire of enjoying others' wives, humiliating others from excess of pride, wrathfulness, fickleness, and refusing to maintain those worthy of being maintained, these six acts of wickedness are always practised by sinful men defying all dangers here and hereafter. He that regards the gratification of lust to be one of life's aims, he that is exceedingly proud, he that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the officers congregated in the chateau grounds 'the order of the Iron Cross'—a generous supply of these decorations being carried in a basket by one of his orderlies, following him about as he walked along. Meantime the King, leaving Napoleon in the chateau to ruminate on the fickleness of fortune, drove off to see his own victorious soldiers, who greeted him with huzzas that rent the air, and must have added to the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... entered public life in 1851, as one of the three representatives for Melbourne in Victoria's first Parliament. But, doubtful perhaps, with his anti-radical temperament as to the fickleness of large town populations, as well, possibly, as the dread of his liability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changed the venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat was always secure, until, in his ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... Cleopatra;(192) the Newcastle was all haughtiness and coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides Newcastle's natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether they will or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... fickleness of fashion exercises in constant local variations that mutability which is utterly denied to it in Brittany with regard to time. Every district, almost every commune has its own peculiar 'mode' (for both sexes) which changes not from generation to generation. As the mothers ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Christendom from which he came fell in some strange fashion upon him; and riding out alone before the people, he cried out, "I am your leader"; and himself promised to grant them all they asked. That promise was afterwards broken; but those who see in the breach of it the mere fickleness of the young and frivolous king, are not only shallow but utterly ignorant interpreters of the whole trend of that time. The point that must be seized, if subsequent things are to be seen as they are, is that Parliament certainly encouraged, and Parliament almost certainly ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty tendencies which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent—he confessed to a dangerous fickleness—still, he would readily have slandered himself in the interests of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... haunted by a jealousy that, instead of being diminished by time and absence, increased with each passing day, even waking up in her a vital force of imagination she had not suspected she possessed. She knew men as a race au fond—knew their fickleness, swift forgetfulness, readiness to be content with the second best, so different from the far greater Epicureanism of women; knew their uneasy appetites, their lack of self-restraint; and, adding to this sum of knowledge her personal knowledge of Baroudi as a young, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... dying song and sends it to his lady, "who," he says, "of her noble grace shall show thee courtesy." All the poets were not as constant as their own lines would have us believe. Dante reproaches the famous Cino da Pistoja for fickleness, and the latter confesses the charge, and declares he cannot get "free from Love's pitiless aim." Guido Cavalcanti rebukes Dante himself for his way of life after the death of Beatrice; and this valuable sonnet should be read in connection with the beautiful passage in the Purgatory ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... met a contrary wind in that region," said Christobal, laughing. "Monsieur de Poincilit here, were he in a very bad temper, might exclaim, 'Mille diables!' Why should not our excellent Fernando rail against the almost inconceivable fickleness which could be displayed by eleven times as ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... one, "I am opposed to fickleness and change." Ah! indeed; does it betray fickleness to leave a church to become a missionary? Did God favor fickleness and change when he prevented the permanent location of the apostles in Palestine, by a voice from heaven, and by violent persecutions? Did the Saviour favor fickleness in ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... hated, and it was not the multitude so much as the rulers that hated him. Many of those now shrieking 'Crucify Him!' had shouted 'Hosanna!' a day or two before till they were hoarse. The populace was guilty of fickleness, blindness, rashness, too easy credence of the crafty calumnies of the rulers. But a far deeper stain rests on these rulers who had resisted the light, and were now animated by the basest self-interest in the garb of keen regard ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Spaniards, who first crossed the Isthmus of Panama, under the belief that the whole sea was always as calm as was then the portion they beheld. Storms, if less frequent, are certainly not less violent than in other portions of the world. We certainly very frequently experienced the fickleness of the elements. As we were about to haul up to the northward, the wind suddenly shifted round to that very quarter, and then shifted somewhat to the eastward. We stood away on the starboard-tack, but were evidently ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Disappointed, bewildered, cut to the quick, yet as much in love as ever, he could only in bitter silence turn over in his thoughts the issue of his cherished dream; now persuading himself that Ellen's denial was the effect of a sudden bashfulness, now inveighing against the fickleness of the sex, as all men do when they are angry with any one woman in particular. But his exhibition must go on in spite of wretchedness; and he went about mechanically, talking of curtains and candles, and music, and attitudes, and pauses, and emphasis, looking like a somnambulist whose "eyes ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... delusion and endurance, the scales drop from the eyes of the wife, and revenge or despair drives her into a hostile position towards her lord and master, she is an inhuman criminal, and the hue and cry against the fickleness of women and the falsity of their nature is endless. Oh, the injustice of society and the injustice of cruel man. Is there no relief for helpless women that are bound by the ties of marriage to men who are ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... piece of Injustice in us, to charge the French with Fickleness; for, to give them their due, They are ten times more constant in their Judgments, than we; Their Cid and Iphigenia in Aulis, are Acted at this very day, with as much Applause as they were thirty Years ago: All London ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... the purchaser of the said lands and estate." The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... desirous of the like fame, how will he guess what it is I have omitted,[1] so as to wish to hand down that same to posterity; since each man has a turn of thinking of his own, and a tone peculiar to himself. It was not, therefore, {any} fickleness, but assured grounds, that set me upon writing {again}. Wherefore, Particulo,[2] as you are amused by Fables (which I will style "Aesopian," not "those of Aesop;" for whereas he published but few, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... and inspiring as the distant glimpse of the Pyramids from Cairo! We would fain have lingered long before this glorious picture, but the air was too cold to admit of a halt after our heating walk in the blazing sun. The great drawback to travelling in the Jura, indeed, is this terrible fickleness of climate. As a rule, even thus early in the autumn, you are obliged to make several toilettes a day, putting on winter clothes when you get up, and towards mid-day exchanging them for the lightest summer ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... his loneliness and the aching sorrow of his starved, empty heart to lead him into this girl's life. That he had been new to women and newer still to love did not permit him to excuse himself, and a hundred times he cursed his folly and stupidity, and what he thought was fickleness. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... assurance of being able to bring Dora forward as a witness in his defense that Florence, for the first time, feels a strong doubt thrown upon the belief she has formed of his being a monster of fickleness. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... Tidings? horrible certainty!—Egmont condemned!—what tribunal has the right to summon him?—And they dare to condemn him!—Does the king condemn him, or the duke? And the Regent withdraws herself! Orange hesitates, and all his friends!—Is this the world, of whose fickleness and treachery I have heard so much, and as yet experienced nothing? Is this the world?—Who could be so base as to hear malice against one so dear? Could villainy itself be audacious enough to overwhelm with sudden destruction the object of a nation's homage? Yet so it is—it is-O ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the heavens are opening now. Perhaps up there, this night, some lonely soul Gazes at earth, watches our dawning moon, And wonders, as we wonder." In that dark We knelt together . . . Very strange to see The vanity and fickleness of princes. Before his enemies had provoked the wrath Of Rome against him, he had given the name Of Medicean stars to those four moons In honour of Prince Cosmo. This aroused The court of France to seek a lasting place ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... circumstance which tended to embitter a good deal the close of Weber's life was the arrival in London of Rossini, to whom and to whose works the public immediately transferred its demonstrations of passionate admiration with even more, than its accustomed fickleness. Disparaging comparisons and contrasts to Weber's disadvantage were drawn between the two great composers in the public prints; the enthusiastic adulation of society and the great world not unnaturally followed the brilliant, joyous, sparkling, witty ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Gerard replied that the king had already approved the treaty, that it was now engrossed on parchment, and that a new arrangement would entail "inconvenience and considerable delay." But finally, not without showing some irritation at the fickleness of the commissioners, he was brought to agree that Congress might ratify the treaty either with or without these articles, as it should see fit. This business cost Franklin, as an annoying incident, an encounter with Mr. Izard, and a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... as majestic and as youthful as in the days when he wooed her in the pleasaunce, with her golden hair glittering as before in the sunshine, and the love-light again in her eye. And beside her, oh! fickleness of a woman's heart, oh! irony of life, oh! cruelty to the most faithful passion, Colonel Livingstone, now my Lord Kilsyth. And an expression of fierce satisfaction lit up the Covenanter's ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... he recognized, as readily as would any five-year-old child, this invitation to go motoring. And it banished the memory of Lady's fickleness. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... invitation, I desired that he would go over to Fort Providence, and remain near the Indians whom he had engaged for our service. I feared lest they should become impatient at our unexpected delay, and, with the usual fickleness of the Indian character, remove from the establishment before we could arrive. It had been my intention to go to them myself, could the articles, with which they expected to be presented on my arrival, have been provided at these establishments; but as they could not ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... upon the fickleness of popular favor that the time was so short before these universal favorites dropped out of popular ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... equilibrium between the several European powers, never in fact existed in the king's mind, nor even in Sully's, whom he equally divests of much unfounded glory and fictitious greatness. No doubt, but for his fickleness and inconsistency, Henry could have done a good deal toward realizing such ideas and reforming European politics; but it is saying too much for Henry's influence on the popular opinions of Europe, to affirm, what Michelet gives us to understand, that he could have combined the nations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... The popularity of Caesar with the Roman mob and the jealousy of the official classes—the two motive forces of the play—are revealed. The fickleness of the mob is shown in a spirit of comedy; the antagonism of Marullus and Flavius strikes the note ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... was too evidently genuine; Dick must have written it (as a matter of fact he had; in a moment of pique, no doubt, at some caprice of his real enslaver Dulcie's—but his fickleness brought fatal results on his poor father's undeserving head)—if this diabolical Chawner carried out his threats he would indeed be "done for"; he did not yet fully understand the other's motive, but he thought that he feared lest Paul, in declaring his own sorrows, might also accuse ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... vicissitudes of fortune, a spectacle not less dramatic and infinitely more momentous for the general history of Europe. In Italy, as in Flanders, the fair ideal of civic freedom was blurred and defaced by party feuds and personal ambitions, by the fickleness and passion of the mob, by the lust of conquest and the fratricidal jealousies of neighbouring republics. Yet to the influence of this ideal we must attribute both the solidarity of the Italian city-state and the wealth ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... vague notion that the mother of his new pupil might be induced to defray the expenses of this Review, but he did not wish to move too rapidly lest he should frighten the lady away; he intended to prepare the way gently. Unfortunately, Madame de Barancy, on account of her very fickleness of nature, was difficult to reach. She would continually change the conversation just at the important point, because ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... you. Hibiscus Delicate beauty. Hollyhock Ambition. Hydrangea Vain glory. Ice Plant Your looks freeze me. Ivy Friendship. Iris, German Flame. Iris, Common Garden A message for thee. Jonquil Affection returned. Jessamine, White Amiability. Jessamine, Yellow Gracefulness. Larkspur Fickleness. Lantana Rigor. Laurel Words though sweet may deceive. Lavender Mistrust. Lemon Blossom Discretion. Lady Slipper Capricious beauty. Lily of the Valley Return of happiness. Lilac, White Youth. " Blue First emotions of love. Lily, Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... information, and then made his farewells. Edna's good wishes were couched in a spirit of frigid magnanimity. She had too much self-respect to let him perceive that she resented his fickleness. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... it; while his ultimate and firm approval of the new Constitution, after it had received the chief amendments called for by his criticisms, has been passionately described as an example of gross political fickleness and inconsistency, instead of being, as it really was, a most logical proceeding on his part, and in perfect harmony with the principles ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... me. Sit down again, for I have a long story to tell. I have not changed my mind, nor am I guilty of any special fickleness. But circumstances have arisen which make it impossible for me to keep my engagement. Captain Bertram sees this as plainly as I do. He is very thankful to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... perish in Winter if not congregated in masses. Admirable adaptation, 144. Swarming necessary. Circumstances in which it takes place. June the swarming month. Preparations for swarming. Old queen accompanies the first swarm. No infallible signs of 1st swarming, 145. Fickleness of bees about swarming. Indications of swarming. Hours of swarming, 146. Proceedings within the hive before swarming. Interesting scene. Bells and frying-pans useless, 147. Neglected bees apt to fly away in swarming. Bees properly cared for seldom do it. Methods of arresting ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... species with mathematical precision. Moreover, he is careful, cautious, observant, and steady-going—a model business man, in fact, of sound middle-class morals and sober middle-class intelligence. No flitting for him, no coquetting, no fickleness. Therefore, the flowers that have adapted themselves to his needs, and that depend upon him mainly or solely for fertilisation, waste no unnecessary material on those big flaunting coloured posters which we human observers know ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... generation and became totally forgotten in another. What jealousies, what petty bickerings, what extravagances! With fancy and desire unchecked, what ingenious tricks they used to keep themselves in the public mind,—tricks begot of fickleness and fickleness begetting. And yet, it was a curious phase: their influence was generally found when history untangled for posterity some Gordian knot. In old times they had sung the Marseillaise and danced the carmagnole and indirectly plied the guillotine. And to-day they smashed ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... true that the chief bridesmaid's mother shook her head at him, and called him fickle, but then his fickleness was of so open and boyish an order that it could hardly be regarded as a fault, especially since no one—with the exception of the chief bridesmaid—ever took him seriously. And to her at least young Noel Wyndham was always ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead, and is almost, without exception, a constant source ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... political groups have their reactions, in which, notwithstanding the great room for improvement, they stand for morality and justice. The relations of man to man are becoming better understood every day. His fickleness and selfishness are more readily observed in recent than in former times, and as a result the evils of the present are magnified, because they are better understood; in reality, social conditions are improving, and the fact ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... for it. These colossal ruins are to the modern only enormous eyesores. He looks back along the valley of the past and sees a perspective of splendid but unfinished cities. They are unfinished, not always through enmity or accident, but often through fickleness, mental fatigue, and the lust for alien philosophies. We have not only left undone those things that we ought to have done, but we have even left undone those things that ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... whole as a dream, and reproaches the king for his fickleness, as he had just before fallen in love with Kuvalayamala, the princess of Kuntala, and recommends him to be content with the queen, as "a partridge in the hand is better than a pea-hen ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... to a time of stress when Minna began to suffer from the fickleness of some one nearer to her than fortune. Wagner began to cast meaning glances over the garden wall. As Mr. Henderson says: "He was as inconstant as the wind, a rover, and a faithless husband. His misdoings ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... the object of this singular and characteristic procession. The tenants of the Lagunes, with the fickleness with which extreme ignorance acts on human passions, had suddenly experienced a violent revolution in their feelings towards their ancient comrade. He who, an hour before, had been derided as a vain and ridiculous pretender, and on whose head bitter imprecations had been ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... know that thou art present, With love that seems to be A band to bind me willingly To heaven and to thee. At noon-day, when the tumult and The din of life is heard, When in life's battle each heart is With various passions stirred, I turn me from the blazonry, The fickleness of life, And think of thee in earnest thought, My dearest one-my wife! When the daylight hath departed, And shadows of the night Bring forth the stars, as beacons fair For angels in their flight, I think of thee ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by nature cold. The sayings about women's fickleness are mostly of French origin; from the famous distich of Francis the First, upward and downward. In England it is a common remark, how much more constant women are than men. Inconstancy has been longer reckoned discreditable to a woman, in England than in France; ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... volume, in deference to the advice of friends; probably wise, for unless the change had been made, the book might never have been read at all.' So writes the author in his last pages; and returning to his first love, it is hard to say whether from fickleness or from constancy he adds, 'So far as I am concerned, I regretted the change then, and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... While affairs were in this state in Isauria, and while the king of Persia was involved in wars upon his frontier, repulsing from his borders a set of ferocious tribes which, being full of fickleness, were continually either attacking him in a hostile manner, or, as often happens, aiding him when he turned his arms against us, a certain noble, by name Nohodares, having been appointed to invade Mesopotamia, whenever occasion ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... window was gained, and all were saved. The multitude in the street absolutely danced with triumph, and huzzaed, and yelled till you would have fancied their very throats would crack; and then, with all the fickleness of interest characteristic of a large body of people, pressed and stumbled, and cursed and swore, in the hurry to get out of Dunham Street, and back to the immediate scene of the fire, the mighty diapason of whose roaring flames formed an awful accompaniment ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... effect, and three missionaries of great merit and learning were sent. By dint of great hardships, and, by living in the same manner as the Indians, they succeeded in baptizing many; but when they learned the fickleness of the Indian nature, and that it was as easy for them to become baptized as it was to take to the mountains to continue their former mode of life, the missionaries proceeded more cautiously in giving them the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... respecting the frontiers, and arrange about the marching of his troops. His constant word to them was forward! forward! For the precious time for action was slipping away, and he feared their Indian allies, so important to their security while on the march, might, with their usual fickleness, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Then, with the customary fickleness of a mob, the soldiers applauded the corporal, who again announced his determination to thrash the first man of his squad who should declare non-combatant principles. Bravo, the corporal! they would soon settle ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... this that Jael had quarreled with Grace for her fickleness, and gave her a look of beaming affection; then fell into a dead silence, and soon tears were seen stealing down ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... this is too much. I deserved distrust by my wretched folly and fickleness last year, but I did not know what you were to me then—my most precious one! Can you not trust me! Do you not ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior mind—one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness. But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing wooden horse, and Joost—the serious, the sometimes seasick—rode beside her on a dappled grey, to the familiar old English ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... did determine,—and did take and pursue his resolution. In all the tottering imbecility of a new government, and with Parliament totally unmanageable, he persevered. He persevered to expel the fears of his people by his fortitude, to steady their fickleness by his constancy, to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom, to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious,—to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... politician by nature to care for preserving an outward consistency in his incidental remarks concerning the lower classes. In his "Clerk's Tale" he finds room for a very dubious commonplace about the "stormy people," its levity, untruthfulness, indiscretion, fickleness, and garrulity, and the folly of putting any trust in it. In his "Nun's Priest's Tale" he further enlivens one of the liveliest descriptions of a hue-and-cry ever put upon paper by a direct reference to ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... delay from calms in the tropical latitudes, through which we should have to pass—from storms off Cape Horn, renowned among mariners for the fickleness of its wind—other obstacles might be encountered, and the voyage protracted far beyond the period ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... else but sense-experience could reach her mind. She had seen tragedies of animal life, lonely death-struggles, horrible flights and more horrible captures, she had seen joyous wooings, love-pinings, partings, and bereavements. She had seen maternal fickleness and maternal constancy, maternal savagery; the end of mated bliss and its—renewal. She had seen the relentless catastrophes of storm. There had been starving winters and renewing springs, sad beautiful autumns, the riotous waste and wantonness of summer. These had all been objective ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... and did take and pursue his resolution. In all the tottering imbecility of a new government, and with parliament totally unmanageable, he persevered. He persevered to expel the fears of his people by his fortitude—to steady their fickleness by his constancy—to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom—to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people he resolved to make them great and glorious; to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of a sailor's life is to be "certain of his position." It is a source of great worry at times, but I don't think that it need be so at this time. Yet even the best position has its dangers on account of the fickleness of the elements. But I think that, left untrammelled to the individual effort of its creators and to the collective spirit of its servants, the British Merchant Service will manage to maintain its position on this restless and ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the Legislature demands their protection against the assaults of the Executive; they defend the Union from the disobedience of the States, the States from the exaggerated claims of the Union, the public interest against private interests and the conservative spirit of stability against the fickleness of the democracy." The contrast between these observations and the disheartened words in which Jay declined renomination to the chief justiceship in 1801 gives perhaps a fair measure of ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... this our father died, and John wished to be married at once. But Ellen, although she could not hide her attachment to him, steadily refused to engage herself on account of her invalid mother, whose only and devoted attendant she was. Fickleness was not one of my brother's faults, and he was true and steady in his love for the girl—how true and steady I never knew until I learned it from himself in my ship's cabin on the broad Atlantic. I found myself with a few thousand pounds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... she laughed softly, because the other two were coming back on to the lawn. "I wonder that you have—I have half a mind to say the impudence—to ask such a thing. You have confessed your fickleness in an almost shameless way; and now you ask me to help you with the other girl! No, my lord: if I know anything of Brenda van Huysman's nature, there is no one who can help you except ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith |
